display kerchief

plural display kerchiefs

1. A purely ornamental handkerchief designed to be partially showing from the breast pocket of a jacket.

   1 more example

   He had had to accept half a dozen unusually patterned foulard ties, dark socks with fancy clocks, two or three 'display kerchiefs' for his breast pocket, nylon vests and pants (called T-shirts and shorts), a comfortable light-weight camel-hair overcoat with over-buttressed shoulders, a plain grey snapbrim Fedora with a thin black ribbon and two pairs of hand-stitched and very comfortable black Moccasin 'casuals'.

   1954, Ian Fleming, “A Visiting-Card”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 24